The Knik team at the Chefornak Airport project.
For Knik Construction, winter is a time to look back at the past year of accomplishments and plan ahead for the upcoming spring and summer season. "Knik had a busy year last year with 10 contracts spread out among many Alaskan communities. Like most years, our main customer has been the Alaska Department of Transportation (ADOT)," says Troy Gray, Knik Business Development Manager.
Bethel continues to be Knik’s "backyard" and provides steady work opportunities. Crews started and completed the Bethel Tundra Ridge Road, adding an alternate route through town.
"Toward the coast, we had a few rural airport projects also administered by ADOT," Troy says. "Our challenging Kipnuk Airport project was completed with the construction of an access road, apron and final runway grading." Knik’s biggest job in the past year was the Chefornak Airport which included an almost three-month winter phase to build a 5-mile ice road to Cheeching Mountain for development of a material site. "Our crews drilled holes around the clock to later load with powder and explosives. In nine separate shots, we blasted the solid rock formations into "shotrock" that was loaded into our trucks and hauled back to the airport stockpile," Troy says. When summer arrived, crews barged over a rock crusher plant and processed the rock into gravel that was used to complete the project.
Upriver from Bethel, a large airport project in Kwethluk involved 100-plus barge loads of aggregate sourced from Knik’s Platinum operations. "Bering Marine Corporation did a great job working with Knik crews to efficiently deliver over 115,000 tons of aggregate," Troy says. The majority of this project is complete, except for a month of work on the access road this year. In Sleetmute, the Knik teams completed the airport project with the construction of the snow removal equipment building on the apron in September.
To the north, paving was completed on the Saint Mary’s Airport, and in Mekoryuk, equipment and materials were mobilized for winter work and a busy 2025 season. The largest paving project of the season was in Soldotna. Crews completed the Funny River Road and Cohoe Loop Road contract using Knik-supplied materials.
In addition to construction contracts, Knik operated four retail material sites in Platinum, Bethel, Soldotna and Unalaska which provide various products for both Knik’s projects and external customers. Platinum had a banner year exporting 225,000-plus tons of aggregates.
"Our Bethel yard rarely had a day this season where a barge wasn’t unloading or loading aggregate," he says. "This was also our first full season as the operator of the Ugadaga Quarry in Unalaska. We sold around 35,000 tons of surfacing gravel with a large chunk of that supplying the Bethel Tundra Ridge Road project that required material to be sourced from a high-quality quarry. Our successes last year were only possible with the long hours and hard work our teams put in. Our people continue to be our most important asset."
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